


a little more kissing, a little less cold

by eatcops



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Arthur (Mystery Skulls Animated)-centric, Bipolar Lewis (Mystery Skulls Animated), Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Lewis (Mystery Skulls Animated) Lives, M/M, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 16:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16412192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatcops/pseuds/eatcops
Summary: Lewis didn’t bring much. Some books, another couch (which Vivi said Arthur desperately needed), a record player. He brought more life into Arthur’s apartment, the same way he brought more soul into Arthur’s life. Rather than empty shelves and the broken shell of a man, Arthur was given books and little glass dogs and feelings.





	a little more kissing, a little less cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeseo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeseo/gifts).



Arthur brushed his hair back, fingers rubbing against his hairline harshly. He kept his eyes closed as he carefully pulled his hair into a loose bun at the back of his head, just enough to keep it lumped together and out of the way. A headache thrummed at his temples, a low beat that he couldn’t get rid of, but he decided he would address it at a later time. He had more pressing matters at hand. 

He opened his eyes again to look at the clock in front of him. It was a mistake to take on. He didn’t know  _ jack  _ about clocks. Leave it to him to be able to tell you if your valves are crushed due to a busted timing belt as soon as he glances under the hood, but not how to fix a broken hand on a clock. Google helped enough, and he was able to press them back into place. He couldn’t help but feel a bit useless, so he decided to switch the glowing sign off and head home.

Home was where Vivi and Lewis were waiting for him, Vivi sat on the couch with Mystery at her feet and Lewis in the kitchen, head in his hands, peeking through his fingers at the fridge. Arthur decided to pass both of them and instead head upstairs and to the shower without so much as a wave. He sat on the edge of the tub as he waited for the water to heat, rubbing his thumbs over the thick bands on his wrists. 

When he stepped back downstairs, hair still wet but hands clean of oil, he blinked. 

Vivi and Mystery were nowhere to be seen, and had instead been replaced by Lewis lying down with a pillow over his face.

“Are you… okay?” He was suddenly over-aware of the way his hair was dripping water down his neck, sliding down his back and onto the floor to spring dark spots.

Lewis looked back and he pulled the pillow off of his head, instead pulling it to his chest and nodding. “Vivi has a… date, or something, with someone. I guess I… nodded off. Sorry.” Arthur shrugged and he pushed Lewis’s legs out of the way to sit down. He ignored the way his fingertips started buzzing.

“It’s cool.” It really, really was  _ not  _ cool. Or, at least, the way his heart was pounding at the thought that Lewis trusted him enough to just… fall asleep on his couch like that wasn’t. He’d only ever had that amount of trust with… well, no one. It was simultaneously the best and the absolute fucking worst thing that could have been happening to him. “You can just sleep.”

“Not tired.”

“But—”

“Head shit.” Arthur went quiet and he stared at his hands.  _ Head shit.  _ That either implied he was too manic to sleep, or too afraid that he’d fall into nightmares. Both were heartbreaking. Neither were something Arthur could do anything about. “Too… buzzy. But also not. You know?” 

He really, really didn’t. 

Arthur never entirely knew what Lewis meant when he used words like ‘buzzy’ and ‘head shit’ to describe what was going on.  _ His  _ idea of ‘buzzy’ was entirely different than Lewis’s. Lewis said his was more of an active thing, while Arthur’s could be described as passive, and it made it difficult for them to bond over that specific feeling. But Arthur had, in his mind, gotten a pretty good grip of the  _ technical  _ terms for Lewis’s feelings, which was more helpful than the colourful ones. “Sure. Can I help?”

Lewis shrugged and he rubbed his hands down his face. “Dunno. I’m just tired, I think. Haven’t slept in…” his words trailed off, presumably into the void. 

Arthur mumbled a gentle,  _ “Jesus christ.”  _ He put one hand on Lewis’s back and the other on his knee with a small, almost-shy smile. “I’ll sleep with you, if that’ll help.” Lewis blinked. Arthur pulled away immediately and threw his hands into the air. “Not like that! I just—I meant you can stay here! And sleep in my bed! With me in it, too!”

“Like cuddling?”

“Not… not  _ cuddling…  _ just… dudes… holding each other!” Lewis smiled knowingly. Arthur had always hated that look. “Yeah, cuddling. Forget I said anything. I hate you.”

“Nooooooo!”

That night, Lewis took Arthur up on his offer. The plan  _ was  _ for Lewis to put his head on Arthur’s chest, but that was shoved into a deep fire pit and then its ashes were burned when they realised that Lewis was just too goddamn  _ big  _ to be the little spoon. So, they switched positions. It was a million times more comfortable for both of them, and Arthur preferred being able to see Lewis’s face. He never would have said that out loud, though. 

A few days passed, and this arrangement became their norm. They would go to wake up, tangled in a mess of legs and blankets and phone cords, get dressed, go to work, run errands, get home, chill, and then go to sleep tangled in the same mess of legs and blankets and phone cords. It  _ worked,  _ too, which was troubling. 

Arthur was no longer plagued by nightmares, Lewis was no longer waking up every thirty minutes only to be unable to sleep after, and they were… pretty much fine. They were both much more energetic, Lewis going as far as to go on  _ runs,  _ Arthur as far as not passing out the moment he walked through their front door.  _ His.  _

That was another thing:  _ Arthur  _ became  _ Arthur and Lewis,  _ and  _ His  _ became  _ Their, I’m  _ became  _ We’re.  _ They has been inseparable at the start, but eventually, there wasn’t even a chance of separation. You  _ never  _ had Arthur without Lewis. Lewis wouldn’t go anywhere without Arthur trailing behind him. 

Arthur started to notice more, too. 

Like the way that Lewis’s hair dried slower than anyone else’s he had met, how his eyes shone just  _ that  _ much brighter when talking about his family. Lewis got freckles rather than burning when he was in the sun for too long, something he had been hiding through hoodies and makeup. The first time Arthur saw him, skin dusted with freckles and cheeks red, he nearly passed out. 

They started being physically closer. 

When standing in line, Lewis would drape his arms over Arthur’s shoulders and put his chin on top of Arthur's head, careful to not mess up his hair. Arthur would lean back into him and close his eyes, letting his  _ friend’s  _ warmth wrap around him like a fur blanket on a February morning. 

Arthur never felt alone with Lewis around. Sometimes, he would fall into traps of feeling alone even while other people were there and even when being actively talked to. He would scream and cry in the shower to songs be barely knew the words of because he felt so  _ goddamn alone  _ and so  _ empty,  _ even though he had seen his friends maybe not an hour before. 

But after they moved in together, everything changed. 

Lewis didn’t bring much. Some books, another couch (which Vivi said Arthur  _ desperately  _ needed), a record player. He brought more  _ life _ into Arthur’s apartment, the same way he brought more soul into Arthur’s life. Rather than empty shelves and the broken shell of a man, Arthur was given books and little glass dogs and  _ feelings.  _ It was, in all honesty, terrifying. He had gotten so used to  _ his  _ standards, to  _ his  _ normal—the feeling of being alone and forgotten was left in a box somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was weird, at first. It made him feel like he was in a humid room, like his throat was sticky with  _ something  _ that he couldn’t place or get out. It was only after talking to people online that he figured out what it was. 

Love. 

Arthur was hopelessly in love with Lewis. He was in love with the way his eyes gleamed when they watched shitty movies, he was in love with the way his voice got impossibly deeper when he sang, he was in love with how clumsy Lewis was. He was in love with the fact that despite being from a line of chefs, Lewis couldn’t cook for his life. 

Arthur was in love with the fact that Lewis was able to shine light on his life when no one else could with just a smile and a quiet, “Good morning.” 

He smiled back and closed his eyes again, desperate to ignore his heart pounding against his ribs. “Mornin’,” he mumbled back. His breath hitched when a warm, gentle hand brushed his hair out of his face. He opened his eyes again, only to see Lewis impossibly closer, his smile impossibly bigger. 

“You snore now.”

Arthur scoffed and he sat up, putting his hand against his chest in both feign shock and a useless attempt to calm his heart. “I do  _ not.” _

“You do!” Lewis laughed, long and loud. It made Arthur’s chest warm. “You do. It’s not a  _ bad  _ thing, I think it’s really funny.”

“I think  _ you’re funny.” _

“Yeah?”

“Funny lookin’!”

_ “HEY!”  _ Lewis huffed and he turned around, pulling the blanket back up to his nose. “I hate you. I’m never getting out of bed again. Here I was, thinking the great Arthur thought I was funny…” he fake sniffled, “but no… it was all a  _ set-up…” _

Arthur snorted and scooted over to Lewis, putting one arm in front of his chest and the other behind his back, effectively caging him. “C’mon, babe, don’t be like that.” Both of their faces went  _ red  _ as soon as he said it. 

_ “Babe?” _

“Lewis, I—”

“You called me babe.”

“Yeah, I did—look, we can—”

_ “You called me babe.” _

“Yeah!” Arthur threw his hands into the air and then brought them back down to slap on his own face. “I did! I sure did! Can we please forget about it? It was an accident, just—just a reflex thing—”

“Was it?” Lewis’s fingers trailer up Arthur’s arm before curling around his wrist and tugging. His eyebrows were drawn together. “Was it just a reflex thing, Arthur?”

Arthur shivered and he let Lewis take his hands, squeezing his eyes shut. He weighed out his options: either tell Lewis the truth and risk losing his best friend, or lie to Lewis and risk  _ hurting  _ his best friend. He let out a tiny, defeated, “No.”

Lewis kissed him. 

It wasn’t fireworks and explosions and bursts of colour behind eyelids. There was no fighting for dominance over the kiss or biting of lips. Arthur’s hand trailed up to tangle in Lewis’s hair, but that was about as far as it went. They stayed like that for a while, just kissing, hands roaming around bodies to get a map for even when it got dark. Arthur noted that Lewis’s hips were softer and more malleable than he had previously thought they’d be. 

“I can feel you thinking. Cut it out.”

Arthur laughed and he pulled away, screwing his face up.  _ “What?” _

“You get all…” Lewis waved his hand around, “tense. When you’re thinking. I don’t know what  _ you’re  _ thinking about, but all  _ I’m  _ thinking about is if you’ll agree to date this mess.”

“You think  _ you’re  _ a mess?” Arthur scoffed and Lewis cupped both of both cheeks, pressing their foreheads together. His eyes were shining, though concern and fear and a million other emotions Arthur couldn’t place were swimming around in them. The shorter man’s chest got tight when it finally processed in his head that Lewis was  _ asking him out.  _ “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure, I’ll date you. That’d be… I’d like that. Yeah.”

“Awesome.” 

They may not have been able to completely understand each other’s problems, or why the other one liked their eggs the way they did, but they  _ knew  _ each other. Lewis wasn’t some random dude from a bar that Arthur took home on a whim and some vodka. He was his partner, his best friend, his  _ soulmate.  _

Their lips were pressed together again, and suddenly, the world was a little less cold. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic posting since my rant about ao3... i took a little break from writing after that /.\ but all is ok now! anyway, thanks so much to reese for being so patient with me on this and helping me out... i know a lot more about MSA now! thanks to piropito and wanima for being background noise as well. let me know any comments, concerns, or critiques!


End file.
